Abstract

What are the possibilities of learning from difficult images in an era in which digital technologies have made photographs of social violence ubiquitous? This article critically reflects on this question through an account of the curatorial experiments, dialogic contests and pedagogical failures encountered in organizing No Looking After the Internet: a “looking group” that has met since 2012 which invites participants to look at an image (or a series of images) they are unfamiliar with, and “read” the image out loud together. Premised on the idea that it is not just what photographs depict that is difficult, but the interpretive process we encounter as viewers, No Looking foregrounds the latent knowledge that emerges from grappling with the photographic evidence difficult images offer us. Focusing on two sessions in which participants’ abilities to engage difficult knowledge broke down, the essay presents the first attempt at articulating a visual methodology that asks what we want from photographs in a post-internet age. In so doing, it builds on the psychoanalytically inflected work of pedagogical theorists Deborah Britzman and Roger Simon, which is cautiously optimistic about the spectator’s capacity for ethically engaging the suffering of others.

Item Type:

Article

Additional Information:

“This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in photographies on 2 September, 2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17540763.2018.1445016.”